Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 270

Price Realized: $ 360
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
DARK CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF VOTING RIGHTS (CIVIL RIGHTS RIOTS.) HOYT, JAMES A. The Phoenix Riot. November 8, 1898. 23 pages. 8vo, original printed tan wrappers, slightly faded; small tape mark on the bottom corner of the front cover. [Greenwood, SC: Index-Journal, 1938]

Additional Details

first and only edition. The Phoenix Riot of 1898 came about in the atmosphere of fear and suspicion that permeated the South following Reconstruction. As black communities educated themselves and prospered, poor whites grew increasingly apprehensive and jealous. The elections of 1876 had effectively removed most elected black politicians and disenfranchised black voters. November was election month, and riots had broken out following elections in the large black community of Wilmington, N.C. The Phoenix Riot similarly was an issue of ballots and bullets. This little pamphlet was written by a white newspaperman whose report of the affair is definitely not impartial. What is significant about this incident altogether is the fact that it took place because a white Republican, T.P. Tolbert had set up an alternate "ballot-box" outside the general store where the election was being held and was attempting to collect the names of black men who had not been allowed to vote, so he could take the issue to the federal officials. A confrontation followed in which a white man was killed and Tolbert beaten and shot. A chase to round up black men ensued and four were summarily shot by "firing squad." A dark chapter in the history of voting rights. Scarce, OCLC locates only one copy. Not in any of the standard references.